Minimally invasive diagnostic and interventional procedure prevalence in US and foreign hospitals continues to increase, as does the demand for certain procedures which involve placement of relatively large devices into targeted locations that are initially accessed through the vasculature. For example, percutaneous prosthetic heart valve placement and ascending aortic aneurysm stent graft procedures that are not accomplished using one or more trans-thoracic or trans-abdominal access ports generally involve one or more femoral arteriotomies which may be large in size relative to conventional femoral arteriotomies, due, at least in part, to the size of devices utilized for such procedures. Subsequent to completion of the diagnostic or interventional aspects of such treatments, any associated arteriotomies generally must be closed. While there are existing technologies for closing defects created in veins and arteries due to diagnostic and/or interventional tool access, such as those available from St. Jude Medical, Inc., Abbott Laboratories, Inc., and Access Closure, Inc. under the tradenames Angio-Seal®, StarClose®, and Mynx®, respectively, none of these are well suited for closing relatively large defects—particularly not in the arterial environment wherein relatively high flow rate and pressure are complicating factors.